Leni Wiener

I know it has been some time since my last post, and the only reason is that I wasn’t working on anything new.  I did abandon the quilt portrait in favor of the photo which will appear in the book; I completed the editing of the book layout (which took several days); made thanksgiving dinner; and went to Vermont while my husband and sons skied.

Vermont was beautiful–some of the days we were there it snowed, others it rained.  But it got the lovely snow scenes in my head.

As a member of SAQA (studio art quilt associates) and, in fact, one of the two NY region reps–I participate in a trunk show of the NY region every year.  Our show travels to several venues around the country–this year it will start out at the mid-atlantic quilt festival before going to the quiltfest of NJ in March.  So today it was back into the studio to make a small piece for the show, and get my head back into working.

Here is today’s result.  It is a small and simple piece, only a few pieces of fabric make up the background, and the tree is thread painted.  Trees are wonderful subjects for thread painting–you can’t go wrong–just enjoy the free motion movement of the thread and relax.  A little snow on some branches (my nod to Vermont, although the tree was inspired by one in my front yard) and done:

Best Wishes to all of you for a happy and artistically productive New Year!

Now that I am only a week away from the silent auction donation to benefit the United Way, I decided to finish the two thread painted pillows.  The first you saw in development in this blog:

You can see what the right fabric can do to complement and complete the thread painting,  here is a detail:

The second pillow I made is from a beautiful fabric I used for a pillow in my thread painting book:

By thread painting one of the motifs and then fussy cutting it and doing a machine applique onto the pillow, I get a nice effect.  Here is a detail of the thread painting:

Finally got back to the Flamenco this morning.  I decided to go with the second version–I like the chair but felt the figure in the doorway was distracting.  I also really wanted a vertical format.  The next step was to look at the details–little changes mean a lot.  If you look closely you will see:

the skirt was made fuller on the right and given more movement

the neck of the guitar was made darker so that it would blend into the background

Now it is ready to sew together

Not my most aesthetic challenge, I need to make something for a charity auction and have decided that thread painted pillows might be the most appropriate choice.  I plan to start with an existing fabric and “thread paint it in” so that it looks like amazing embroidery.  These are the three fabrics I pulled out of my stash as a starting point.  I will probably cut pieces out from each design and apply them to a background so that I control the look of the pillow.  Watch for their development.

fabrics for thread painting